Quotations Weblog

I want to believe this. I really do, but I think that it’s possible to be happy and not really know where the heck you’re going. I think it’s even possible to be happy and have regrets or reservations. For me, happiness is something entirely different.

Happiness is having something to do and someone to do it with and someplace to sleep at night.

I don’t need much more than that.

What is happiness to you?

I haven’t found this to be true. When I have completed everything on my list for a day, I feel much better lazing around than when my mind is full of the activities that I am avoiding. Jerome K. Jerome may have been funny when he said this, but for me, I prefer to check the things off my list before I can thoroughly enjoy my idling.

Of course, I can’t do that if I don’t have a list. If I don’t start my day out with a list of chores that I want completed, then I never feel truly done. I can’t enjoy my down time if I don’t reach the point where I can check the last thing off the list. Setting that goal for each day really increases my ability to enjoy my time when I’m done.

So, make a list. Check off your duties and you will be able to thoroughly enjoy your idling far more than Jerome ever thought possible.

What have you been fearing lately? Have you let those negative thoughts develop in your darkroom of fear? Turn on the lights and let them shine brightly on your fears. Let the sun expose those negatives for what they really are: blank film. It was your imagination that turned them into monsters.

Jim Carrey has two thoughts on how to be successful in life.

Not only do you visualize your success, but you have to get out there and do the work.

Conformity: it’s like it’s a dirty word or something. Maybe because it represents a more guttural side to ourselves. The fact that we are pack animals is something that we like to deny, but thousands of years of hunting in packs bred an instinct of conformity into us that we cannot deny.

Individuality: it’s like sainthood in some respects. It has spawned our great inventions, our great literature and our great philosophies. We strive toward it and fight the pack mentality that saved the hides of our ancestors so long ago.

If we conform, we become lost in the crowd. If we are individual, we are lonely and isolated. Which is right? Is it always a tight-rope walk between the two?